The invention relates to the printing of documents in a computer environment. More particularly, the invention relates to the secure printing of documents in a networked printer environment.
Referring to FIG. 1, the way users print documents has remained fairly standard among the years. Not much has changed in the procedure of the user obtaining a document at a computer 101 and sending the document across a network or other type of connection 102 to a printer 103 for printing. The printer 103 prints the document which the user eventually retrieves.
With respect to FIG. 2, the user 201 also prints documents through a server 202, such as a document server or print server. When a document server 202 is used, the user 201 selects a document resident on the server 202 for printing. The server 202 connects to the printer 203 and sends the document to be printed to the printer 203 which prints the document.
A print server 202 acts as an intermediary between the user 201 and the printer 203. The print server 202 receives a document from the user 201, processes or rasterizes the document, and sends it to the printer 203. The printer 203 receives the processed or rasterized document and prints the document.
Printing documents in a secure environment has typically been performed using the document server approach. A user accesses a document on the document server and attempts to print it. The document server checks to see if the user has permission to print the document and, if the user does have permission, sends the document to the appropriate printer.
The document permission parameters used by the document server are set by the document creator or system administrator.
However, this approach requires that the document server send documents to a printer over an open network, leaving the server/printer connection insecure. Further, the document permission parameters are set for the entire document without any further granularity, e.g., on a per page basis.
It would be advantageous to provide a secure document printing system that provides for the secure transportation of documents throughout a network. It would further be advantageous to provide a secure document printing system that allows document creators to define access rules for a document on a per page basis.